Pardons Are One Remedy for Our Excessively Punitive System

In 2004, President George W. Bush warned America about our oversized prison population. Since then, some states have taken steps to reverse the trend of prison growth and remedy the harm caused by decades of excessively punitive sentencing. But these efforts, mostly minor drug law reforms, have been underwhelming. As such, we have yet to see any real decrease in the size of the U.S. prison population, which remains the world’s largest with almost 2.4 million people incarcerated.

To spearhead a national movement to reverse trends of mass incarceration, governors must embrace a reinvigorated clemency process.

The individual scars of unjust sentencing continues to fester for many people in prison who are beyond the scope of recent reforms, but remain incarcerated with significant societal and personal costs. But the harm of incarceration extends far beyond the costs to the individuals living behind bars.

Clemency – most notably executive pardons and sentence commutations or reductions – grants governors the power to correct injustices and provide mercy to deserving people with criminal convictions. Both constitutionally protected and strengthened by historical precedent, our founders envisioned clemency as an important mechanism to alleviate individual cases of human suffering by serving as an executive check on overly punitive criminal sanctions imposed by legislatures and judges.

Recognizing the need to reverse the trend of mass incarceration and to blunt the impact of wasteful and highly ineffective tough-on-crime laws, hundreds of pardons and commutations are granted annually by governors across America. For example, this past month alone, Gov. Pat Quinn in Illinois issued 232 pardons, Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia issued nearly 50, and Gov. Jerry Brown of California issued more than 100. Despite the growing bipartisan consensus that our prison populations must decrease, though, the majority of governors remain reluctant to exercise this important executive power and indeed grant clemency at a miserly rate.

To spearhead a national movement to reverse trends of mass incarceration, governors must embrace a reinvigorated clemency process that is available to all deserving individuals, both those currently incarcerated who otherwise lack legal recourse for release, and individuals who have been released from prison but face extreme detriment due to their criminal convictions. Doing so will not only ensure that clemency exists in a manner that embodies our collective values of mercy and redemption, but also serve as a genuine incentive and reward for individual efforts at rehabilitation and reform -- and not just those by celebrities.